Iraq’s football victory over South Korea (4-3 on penalties), brought cheering crowds onto the streets. Just as the team was made up of Sunnis, Shias and Kurds, so the celebrations brought members of all those communities together.

“Iraq’s victory with this harmonious team represents the way we should all live together” football fan Nuri Najjar told Reuters in Basra.

Lobby Luddsaid,

“isn’t it strange how the Western supporters of the “resistance” suddenly go quiet on these occasions?”

Whose ‘resistance’ are we talking about? Who has gone quiet? Where is the support?

I don’t know of anybody on the left who thinks such acts (eg bombing football fans) are justifiable. I believe certain people on the left are too tolerant of religious fundamentalists, but almost more so I object to ostensible socialists pointing to the barbarity of certain groups now active in Iraq as being the main problem. It’s all very ugly, but the voice I hear from the AWL is that possibly, just possibly, right now it’s better to stay, all the better to avoid a bloodbath.

Lobby: you must surely know that the Workers Power sect openly support *all* actions by *all* elements of the ‘resistance’. The SWP and Galloway take much the same position, but throw in a little bit of ambiguity when pinned down on the worst sectarian excesses, just to cover their cowardly asses.

Lobby Luddsaid,

Perhaps for sake of clarity it would be best not to talk about ‘the resistance’ as if it were a single entity.

After all, aren’t striking oil workers resisters – even the AWL? Lumping all those active against the US (and other Iraqis) as ‘the resistance’ can only aid the right – every atrocity will be used as a justification for the continued presence of the US in Iraq.

But then, who wants clarity when moral outrage in support of your own politics is so much more comforting?

If you want more evidence of support for the fash ‘resistance’ in Iraq by so-called socialists then just look for John Game comments here or trawl the sewer of Stalin’s Tombola or look at youtubes of Galloway “we are all Hib now'” etc etc —

Game even stated here that he’d support the killing of Iraqi communists by the islamist nutjobs because the Iraqi commies are collaborators with the ‘occupying’ forces.

“The other debate is on the characterisation of the Iraqi resistance. Socialist Outlook has extended unconditional support to the resistance of the peoples of Iraq against the occupation of their country,”

“In all their recommendations and resolutions, the Cairo Conferences have stressed a number of basic principles which guided its strategies: 1) the unconditional support of all forces of resistance against imperialism and Zionism in Palestine, Iraq, and Lebanon; 2) a call for the necessary unity of all resistance groups, bypassing their ideological and political differences, and considering the struggle against US and Zionist colonialism to be the main strategic struggle;”

Lobby Luddsaid,

I have asked for evidence that I was an apologist for religious sectarian violence. A couple of links were provided which demonstrated no such thing.

If there are groups on the left which you can show are supportive of sectarian atrocities, go ahead. Do not include me in that group, I have written nothing which supports religious sectarian violence.